I saw these images walking around Pasadena this morning, the day after the Day of the Dead. Later, back in my hotel room, I found out that Nick Cave has started The Red Hand Files, a site where he answers questions from fans. He’s written about boredom and Grinderman (two of my favorite things), and, in a truly lovely letter, his thoughts on grief after losing his son:
I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.
Read the whole letter here.
